On the Mysteries (Thomas Taylor trans.)

precept. Plutarch Plutarch (c. 46 – 119 AD) was a Greek philosopher and biographer known for his works on morality and his "Parallel Lives." He was a Platonist who emphasized the distinction between the human and the divine. too, in his above mentioned treatise, most forcibly and clearly shows the impiety of worshiping men as Gods.*

“So great an apprehension indeed,” says Dr. Stillingfleet,† Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699) was a prominent English theologian and Bishop of Worcester, known for his defense of the Church of England and his scholarly critiques of Catholicism and non-conformist views. “had the Heathens of the necessity of appropriate acts of divine worship, that some of them have chosen to die, rather than to give them to what they did not believe to be God. We have a remarkable story to this purpose in Arrian and Curtius‡ Arrian and Quintus Curtius Rufus were historians who wrote major accounts of the life and campaigns of Alexander the Great. concerning Callisthenes. Callisthenes of Olynthus was a Greek historian and the great-nephew of Aristotle. He accompanied Alexander the Great on his Asiatic expedition but was eventually executed after falling out of favor. Alexander arriving at that degree of vanity as to desire to have divine worship given him, and the matter being started out of design among the courtiers, either by Anaxarchus, as Arrian, or Cleo the Sicilian, as Curtius says; and the way of doing it proposed, viz. by incense and prostration; prostration: the act of bowing down low or lying flat on the ground as a sign of submission or worship; in this context, it refers to the Persian practice of "proskynesis" which the Greeks felt was only appropriate for gods, not mortal kings. Callisthenes vehemently opposed it, as that which would confound the difference of human and

* See the extracts from Plutarch, in which this is shown, in the Introduction to my translation of Proclus Proclus (412–485 AD) was one of the last major Greek philosophers and a head of the Neoplatonic Academy in Athens. on the Theology of Plato.

† Answer to Catholics no Idolaters. Lond. 1676. p. 211 This refers to Stillingfleet’s polemical work regarding the nature of idolatry and worship.

‡ Arrian on the Expedition of Alexander, book 4; and Curtius, book 8. original: "Arrian. de Exped. Alex. l. iv. et Curt. lib. viii."